Consider these facts

Give pathway for release for “Old Law” prisoners

Consider These Facts

These “old law” prisoners
were sentenced before the passing of the truth in sentencing laws 13 years ago.
These people were sentenced under what is called “Old Law.” They have long passed the dates
where they were eligible to be allowed free and yet still sit in prison. The
DOC is using contradicting rules and lack of programs to keep these people in
prisons.

1)
It costs between 20 and 60 thousand a year per prisoner in this state, more if
the prisoner is elderly and sick. Let us
free those prisoners who are ready. The
average daily cost of probation or parole supervision in 2008 was $3.42. The
average cost of a prison inmate was $78.95 or 20 times more than
probation/parole .It is time for a wise prison policy

2) “Between 1970 and 2010, the number of people incarcerated in
this country grew by 700%. As a result, the
United States incarcerates almost a
quarter of the prisoners in the entire world although we have only 5% of
the world’s population.At no other point in U.S.
history—even when slavery was legal—have so many people been unnecessarily
deprived of their liberty
.

3)
For the first time in history WI is
spending more on prisons than on our colleges and other institutions of higher
learning.

4)
While the U.S. has the highest per-capita
incarceration rate and most prisoners in the world, Wisconsin has the third-highest rate (0.4 percent of population) of all
the states, with more than 22,000 prisoners, and also the second-highest
incarceration rate of African-Americans.

5)
In a study funded done by the “No child left behind” act a few years ago,
Milwaukee school children had the poorest reading scores in the nation. Can’t
we put this with fact number 3 and come up with a better solution for crime
than prisons?

6) According to
the national study on prisons done by the JFA institute the US prison sentences
are 2X longer than the English sentences, 3X the Canadian, 4X the Dutch, 5 to 10 times
the French, 5 times the Swedish. Yet these countries’ rates of violent crime
are lower than ours, and their rates of property crime are comparable.

7).
In Minnesota, counties get the corrections money and they chose treatment,
prevention and prison alternatives. Wisconsin
spends eight times more on prisons than Minnesota yet both have the same crime
rate- communities decide how to spend correction money, most goes into
probation and treatment programs

8)
Least Danger to society. The old Law parole ready
prisoners is mostly in their late thirties and older and the least likely to get into more trouble with
the law, yet our system insists on
keeping them incarcerated. Numerous
studies show that age is one of the most reliable predictors of recidivism
rates. Nationally, prisoners between the ages of 18 and 29 experience a
recidivism rate of over 50%, while those 55 or older experience a rate of only
2%. (U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics, All parole
elligible inmates have been in prison at least since 2000 and are older .
Around 1000 of the parole eligible
inmates are over 55. . As a general rule, people become less dangerous as they
age. In males, the greatest drop in
recidivism occurs around age 30 and tends to continue to fall.

Background:

( edited from a MJS
article)”For most of the 20th century, parole was a corrections tool used to
motivate criminals to "earn" release from prison by bettering
themselves through good behavior, rehabilitation programs and education. It
also allowed the system to cor­rect for inappropriately harsh judges. In the
1990s, parole came under attack from tough-on-crime politicians who played to
fears that criminals were getting released from prison without sufficient
punishment, then going on to commit more crimes. Their solution?

Wisconsin eliminated
parole in 2000 as part of one of the nation's harshest overhauls in
criminal-justice sentencing.

Stricter laws, sterner judges and
statutory changes like "truth in sentencing" have led to longer state
prison sentences across all classes of crimes. This has spiked prison
populations and driven corrections spending to
nearly $1.1 billion a year, topping slate spending on its university
system.

Steps Needed.

1)
Hold fair hears for “old Law” prisoners, consider their behavior since their
crime, their support and learning,

There are
BETWEEN 3000 AND 4000 prisoners eligible
for parole in this state, many of whom are rehabilitated, have plenty of
support and are arbitrarily kept back year after year because of the severity
of their crime twenty or thirty years
ago. These are people who were sentenced before truth-in sentencing was enacted
and were eligible for parole after serving 13 years of their sentences. Back
before TIS (Truth in Sentencing)The judge figured this into sentencing, each
case was considered individually and sentences given in the knowledge that the
prisoner with good behavior, could be released after serving only a portion of
that sentence. When truth in sentencing was enacted, parole stopped for the
group of prisoners under this ”old Law “parole
as well as for new people coming in.
Hysteria was whipped up,
supermaxes and prisoner populations mushroomed and the prison boom began ,
drowning out all voices for fairness. the hysteria whipped up to support the
prison growth was unstoppable.

2)
Allow representatives of family and
friends to be present at parole hearings, not just victims.

Now finally prisoners families and
others are joining together to demand that the law be followed, that we as a
society must believe people can change, the there is a limit to revenge. 20 to
30 years for a crime done as a youth is enough. Prisoners must be allowed to
show they have changed and can be contributing, productive citizens. We must
require parole hearings to consider the behavior of the prisoner since his or
her crime, his or her support system and learning since. Also, the prisoner
should be able to have family and friends at parole hearings. As it is now,
only the victim can attend.

3)
Pressure the parole board, legislature and important officials into
acknowledging that people do change and that our mindless tough on crime policy
wastes lives and money and resources. We can be smart on crime without
sacrificing public safety.

JOIN US:

Sign
our Petition, help distribute pamphlets and , take our Survey and join our campaign
to educate the public through letters to the media, and
media interview with ex-prisoners , prisoner family members and other
concerned citizens-let WI hear our voices!!

This blog is a companion to our Parole web page. Wisconsin has 2887 prisoners who are eligible for parole but are denied year after year. We are part of a campaign to see that these people get a second chance. They are all long past their parole dates. We want to spread the message loud and clear that people DO Change. Below are some of the stories and profiles of the many people stuck in a broken and wasteful system.